Ever tried reaching a goal without visualizing it? Most athletes can see themselves crossing the finish line long before they take their first step. Similarly, I play out team goals on paper, encapsulating my vision in an exciting way to motivate my staff.
Voices.com’s corporate culture is one of high-performance. Giving recognition and celebrating success serves as the catalyst for my eager and talented team. For them, recognition creates a surge in productivity.
How do we inspire action? Through “movie posters.” This is something that works really well at our office to maintain focus and to boost our collective productivity levels, all in the form of a departmental challenge. The simple act of creating and displaying movie posters makes our goals more tangible, exciting and bestows a greater sense of purpose. These posters are unveiled each month at an hour-long, all hands-on-deck meeting called The Rally.
To give you an idea of what goes on during a Voices.com Rally, we talk about where the company is at in terms of growth, our triumphs and upcoming projects on a departmental level with each department striving toward a particular goal. We reserve time at the monthly Rally to celebrate individual achievements and announce promotions. I also take time to host fireside chats with particular employees about their roles and goals within the company. Milestones are acknowledged with applause and rewards with everyone leaving the Rally inspired and ready to excel for another month.
As mentioned before, our goals are made more concrete through the creation of movie posters. Just like real movies, each poster features a title embodying the goal, a catchphrase to inspire and credits featuring the names of our headliners, or stars of the show.
Featuring the names of the employees who will be “starring” in the initiative serves as a motivation while keeping them accountable to the featured goal. This accountability and sense of acknowledgment is heightened because of where we showcase the posters. Each current goal can be viewed in the company common area where our Daily Huddle takes place.
Whenever a department hits their goal their most recent poster is retired and then replaced with another one at the next Rally. Once retired, an old poster is given to its team so that they can prominently display it in their workspace as both an encouragement for the future and as a commemoration of their success. To top it off, a departmental celebration is planned as a reward for meeting their goal. Some go mini golfing whereas others prefer a meal.
Our goals are varied, and different departments are given specific aims based on the company’s focus for that month or quarter. Anywhere from one goal, to three or four goals may be presented by myself at any given Rally, with many departments getting new movie posters in consecutive months.
Some movie poster goals that have been posed to departments include the target of attracting 3000 new registered users in a month for the Marketing team, the Sales team hitting a specific number, and a one-week consecutive streak of Customer Service cases closed in under 12 hours – which was actually exceeded, with the streak carrying on for nearly a month.
The motivation and success that stems from our use of movie posters is made manifest in the results that my team reaches, whether it be a certain number of dollars brought in, or a high satisfaction rate reached. We leverage the social environment of our office to inspire individuals to do their best work through support from their peers. We work together as a team and reap rewards as a team. Our happy staff and rolling success is an indicator of this, and something that other SMEs can replicate.
Guest Blogger- David Ciccarelli
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David, currently nominated for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, has been running a web business since 2002 and has helped over 100,000 voice actors showcase their talent. Over the past 10 years, David, with the help of his team, has grown Voices.com from the ground up to become the leader in the industry. As Chief Executive Officer, David is responsible for setting the vision, executing the growth strategy and managing the company on a day-to-day basis. Clients like ABC, NBC, Google, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and thousands of others use Voices.com to search for, audition and hire professional voice actors. David is the author of Voice Acting For Dummies (Wiley Publishing, 2013) and has been selected by Google to be a Google Glass Explorer. |
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This is the second blog in a series of guest blogs by David Ciccarelli, keep an eye out for his next one! You can find the first one on buying the Voices.com domain name here.